Posting Sites
Written Stories
Comics
Written and Comic Forms
INCOMPLETE
Please post links to other posting sites and apps which help with writing or reading fanfic! Also, if you know of fandom-specific fanfic magazines/communities, comment with a link to those to be added here.
Also, leave your opinions on all of the links here, so people who are not familiar with them can read what our community thinks.
Signed up for FFN during the week & cross-posted a couple of stories to see how it compares with AO3.
It’s a bit…uh, retro in its interface. The two-part process of uploading/pasting a document which you then publish from a separate page feels unnecessarily clunky. Editing is awkward - double spaced paragraphs & it doesn’t recognise breaks like horizontal lines at upload - why? 🤷♀️
The mobile site seems to be designed completely around reading so there are no writer features, either publishing or stats related. Something I find really odd, since FFN seems to be a younger audience from what I’ve heard & what modern day pre-teen or teenager favours a desktop over a phone? (showing my age! 😂)
The code of conduct is weirdly finger-wagging regarding spell-checking but doesn’t seem to be too pushed about trolling/harassment/generally not being an asshole on the internet.
Overall, if I was new & looking for a site to publish on, AO3 seems a much easier option, given that the mobile site is as good as the full-day desktop version. And the rich text vs HTML editing means you can get everything just how you like.
I had totally forgotten about the two step process of uploading docs. Didn’t think much of it at the time. From what I hear the interface hasn’t changed too much in a decade or more, so I’m not surprised it seems “retro”.
I’ve never downloaded the app before, so that’s good information to have.
Thanks for following up on this! It’s great to have a first person account on what it’s like.
One thing I do like more about FFN than AO3 is the stats breakdown. It reminds me of blogging sites like WordPress because you can see stats per chapter, country of origin, date of view.
But after posting a few stories, I’m missing the tagging ability from AO3. And the summaries are shorter too so pitching stories is more difficult if you don’t have a good hook…
I do miss the stats per chapter. (As much fun as seeing the country of origin was though, I’m fine without that. It’s less invasive towards the readers.) Without knowing hits on chapters though, the hits stat on AO3 means nothing to me. Because unless it is a one-shot, there is no way of saying anyone clicked on the story and continued.
With one-shots you don’t know if anyone actually read it to the end either. But I’m a little more invested in knowing how many people actually moved to chapter two in my multichaptered fics.
It’s the one thing I really wish AO3 had.
Yeah, on one hand, I hate stats & my desire to monitor them. On the other, I want more detail! 😂
